Operating Systems Posts - Page 9

Google I/O 2014 - Something that has been rumored for quite a while now, has just been confirmed at Google I/O: Android TV. Android TV will support inputs from HDMI, receivers, and more, and will have an application available for your phone.

The home screen will overlay over the top of whatever is playing, be it a TV show or movie. Google seems to have absolutely nailed the user interface, with something that is simple, yet slick. It's not all about movies and TV though, as there will be apps and games, too. You can speak into your smartphone searching for stuff, with the responses turning up on Android TV - a nice touch.

An Android Wear-powered smartwatch can even control Android TV, something I'm sure you didn't expect, but will welcome. Games on Android TV are also something that can work incredibly well, with gamepads being supported (which ones, we don't know yet).

Google I/O 2014 - Google's upcoming L series of Android will feature a "factory reset protection" feature, which will allow users to remotely wipe their device in the event that it is stolen.

Not only that, but the upcoming release of Android will also feature Malware Protection, and Security Patches through Play Services. The more and more time that goes past with Android, the more it becomes a much stronger OS. We will have more details on the L release of Android hopefully very soon.

Google I/O 2014 - Something that plagues virtually every smartphone and tablet user is battery life, right? Well, at Google I/O, Google teased something called Project Volta, with the aim of improving battery life on every subsystem of Android.

Not only that, but the L release of Android will also have improved battery life, so we should see quite the injection of battery life with an L-powered Android device, with Project Volta running behind the scenes.

Google I/O 2014 - This is pretty much just a tease for now, until we get some more information on the L release of Android - which should be Android 5.0, but take a look at the new software buttons.

The new buttons use a triangle as back, circle as home, and square for multi-tasking. I'm personally digging the new simplistic design, something that should roll into the new version of Android when it hits, which should be the new 'L' release of Android. The L release of Android should arrive as Android 5.0, something we should hopefully hear more about this week during Google I/O.

Google I/O 2014 - During the Google I/O conference that is currently on, Google announced it has a massive 62% of the global tablet market share.

If we look back over the last couple of years, this number has grown considerably - last year, Google had just 46% of the global tablet market share. In 2012, it was just 29%. So we can see that Google is doing some truly big business in tablets. The company has also said that it sees 42% of all YouTube usage coming from its mobile OS, Android, and that app installs are up 236% year-over-year.

Google I/O 2014 - Google has kicked off its Google I/O conference, with the company announcing that it has over 1 billion monthly active users on Android, a staggering number.

This time last year, that number was 538 million, so that is quite the explosion of users onto Google's mobile OS. The company had some fun numbers to share, where it sees 93 million selfies taken by Android users daily, 20 billion text messages per day, and people check their phones over 100 billion times a day. Shocking when it gets laid out in front of you like that, isn't it?

The second update to Windows 8.1 is expected to roll out in the coming months, with Windows 8.1 Update 2 set to roll out to users across the world in August-September, but there's news now on just how big this download will be.

A Microsoft representative has reportedly taken to the EightForums, stating that the company is currently training its support employees for Windows 8.1 Update 2. This rep confirmed the August-September timeframe for its release, which will be released into the Windows Store. Something that should surprise most is that Windows 8.1 Update 2 will be a huge 3GB in size.

Considering Update 1 was 'just' 700MB, 3GB is a huge contrast in sizes. This person could just be talking nonsense, but we could also expect Windows 8.1 Update 2 to be 3GB, and if it does, what do you think about that?

Apple has been talking up the next version of iOS for its mobile devices and one of the new features that will and in that versions of iOS is City Tours. A City Tour is a guided camera Flyover view of a city and major attraction in the area.

Only a few cities are currently supported for City Tours, but that number will likely grow in the future. For now, the cities included in the City Tour feature include Rome, Stockholm, Barcelona, New York, Paris, Glasgow, Cape Town, Perth, Bordeaux and San Francisco. At least, those are the cities that have been unearthed in the beta of the new OS.

Apple has a car operating system designed to make it easy to get some of the functionality from the iPhone into the car. Google wants to challenge Apple in the car connectivity space and reports indicate that Google will announce its own car operating system this month. The announcement is expected to come at the annual Google software developer conference called Google I/O.

Google I/O will be held on June 25-26 in San Francisco. At that conference Google is expected to unveil the OS and explain all the workings of its car operating system, however, it is not expected to say what car model will use the OS first.

New statistics have turned up on the Google Developers Dashboard about Android. The new stats show that Android 4.4 KitKat is now running on 13.6% of all devices. Stats were gathered from the devices that visited the Google Play store in a seven-day period ending on last Wednesday.

While 13.6% isn't that much of the market considering how many Android devices are out there, it is a significant improvement over the 8.5% that was recorded a month ago. KitKat did slip past Ice Cream Sandwich, which held 12.3% of the Android market.